Her Princess Dreams

Our local presswali’s daughters Beena and Puja got married recently. Beena’s a bit older than me and Puja is all of 11-12. Yeah, and she was wed off, though she will be staying with her mother only for a few more days. When I first heard this I did, but now I don’t really blame their mother as such. What else was she supposed to do- her husband walked out on them after a bout of heavy drinking once 7-8 years back and she doesn’t even know he is alive or not; she can hardly scrape some money together from her daily job of ironing people’s clothes and other such odd jobs here and there in a few houses. And she herself is a very frail, weak woman, having recently suffered multiple fractures while repairing their one-room shack. I guess she needed some anchorage- an assurance that someone will be there to look after her daughters if she’s dead and gone. There’s another reason as well. She couldn’t afford to organize two different wedding ceremonies, however unlavish, at two different points of time.

But will the girls really be ‘looked after’ as such? I wonder. From all that I know of Beena, she’s a very serious, very somber girl, already apparently weighed down by life. I haven’t seen her smile often. And she’s probably gone to just another small town and will have to keep on doing all that she did here, with the added cares of a household that she would be supposed to manage. And her husband will perhaps, a few years down the line, hang out with the village prostitutes, come back drunk and possibly walk out on their relation just like her father did.

God forbid, but if something like that happens, what about her princess dreams- you know, the kind where everybody gets to live happily ever after? It’s hard to believe that, but maybe her circumstances never allowed her to have any. Who knows.

Do you have a six-pack?

Overheard:

Dudette saunters into the supermarket. Browses the electronics section.

Sales guy at the counter: You looking for something, madam?

Dudette: Yes..er...are rechargeable batteries available?

Sales guy: Yeah, of course...

Dudette: Alrite. *long pause* Okay...so...do you have a six-pack?

Sales guy: What???

Dudette: Arre...a six-pack..I want a pack of six batteries.

Sales guy: Oh, okay.

:D I would consider it an amusing life if I came across such characters several times during a day at work.
Seriously, such people! I mean, that guy would really have been amused at some girl asking him if he had a six-pack...and the best part is, the dudette never had a clue what she had apparently spoken. :D

And there are other reasons why supermarket staffers lead interesting lives. There used to be these two young sales people at the Jaipur Shopper's Stop...the girl was usually on her shift in the ethnic wear section and whenever any of the people shopping wanted to see how a particular saree looked when worn, the girl would willingly oblige, call up the guy and then stand and twirl in front of the mirror while the guy tied the saree around her waist over her uniform, both of them exchanging coy glances in between.
:)

Like I said, there are several reasons that make shopping amusing. Got something to share?

A Polynesian Rhapsody

I was experimenting with a style I hadn't tried in poetry: experience projection. Describing through somebody else's eyes, not your own. Writing as how they would have felt in a given situation. And I came up with this, inspired by "Pioneers of the Pacific" a recent article in the National Geographic Magazine (Roff Smith and Stephen Alvarez, March 2008) about an ancient race of Native Pacific explorers who discovered and colonized almost all of the hundreds of then uninhabited, scattered Pacific islands east of Australia, including Fiji, Tahiti, Easter Island, Polynesia, starting 3000 years back. Their daring voyages in those ancient times have been equated to lunar landings of 1900s in terms of their relative boldness at the time they were undertaken.

They used to undertake long voyages on their hand-built and hand-rigged canoes (no fossil fuel power 3000 years ago :) ), searching for new islands to settle upon. It wasn't like they were forced to move, or that there was pressure on the land. They numbered only a few thousands and the islands were way too many, nearly 300 in Fiji alone. They did it all just for the sake of exploring new frontiers. Researchers now say that one of the reasons why they were able to undertake such long and daring voyages was that they went against the direction of generally prevailing wind currents, so that even if they did not discover any new land, they could just turn around and the wind would take them back where they started from.
Eventually, in a 1000 next years or so, their descendants perhaps reached South America also, eastward from Australia.

So I kind of got inspired from the concept and the wonderful photography in the article and wrote something. It captures a particular moment in the life of two of these people---a couple. The man is setting out on an indefinite voyage to the sea, not knowing when he will be able to return, and even if he will return or not---because after all it's going to be him against the ocean. Here is what his beloved says to him before he sets out.

Go forth, mariner
The blue stretches to infinity
Discover a new paradise
For the two of us...

May the gods guide your way,
The heavens steer you right
And when your spot new land
Marked by towering banks of cloud
Beyond the dusky horizon
And billowing fumes from boiling lava
Oozing into the ocean,
May the guardian spirits
Protect your canoe from the heat..

But if you do not find it
Ride the trade winds back home soon
I'll be waiting
In our moss-hung cave beneath the cliff
Obsidian will shimmer
Vivid tropical blossoms will sparkle
In my soul
Getting a whiff of
Your intoxicating scent of the sea
Paradise wherever you will be.

*Obsidian is a kind of beautiful natural volcanic glass used in that culture for making ornaments and stuff.

This collage was complied by me for the poem.



The text of the NGM article can be found here.
Pics courtesy Google Image Search, Corbis and Stephen Alvarez for NGM.
Poem (c) Sanyukta, March 2008.

Why physics always reminds me of Rome

Yeah, life is generally good. Except that I kind of screwed up my Chem Board Exam paper. No it ain't that bad actually, but not as good as I wanted it to be. (And that, my readers, is the metaphor for life.)
(Gawd. I sound like Charlotte Bronte.) :D

Now next is physics and I'm taking no chances with it at least. But for how long can you keep appreciating the elegant nuances of subatomic particles and the intangible dynamics of semiconductor electronics? Not that I don't like studying stuff. But I'm wishing I had studied harder last year. Heck, even this last month.
And I increasingly feel I have more inclination towards literature, languages, history, myth, art, designing, ya know, stuff like that. Non-technical intellectuality. More human stuff.
Or Life Sciences. I could read biology day in and day out and not get tired of it. And I like all that. Yeah I know I'll have enough of even that in some med course (for which I'll have a fiz exam first. Argh.) I have enough of that supposed-to-study-stuff in bio even now.
But. I'm. Supposed. To. Mug. Fiz. Now.

On second thoughts, physics is kinda cool. And people hold science people (like, real science people. Researchers, scientists.) in more awe than they do designers/authors/historians. I mean, not as people, but their work in generally more respected, or should I say, considered more erudite. Or at least that's what I have observed. (Remember Vittoria Vetra, anybody? :D)
( I wouldn't mind being a physicist if that would, in addition, also make me as lean, as confident, and as smart as what she was portrayed to be. It's not like I'm particularly horrible. Glowing skin, check. Long black hair, check. Earthy features, maybe. "Raw sensuality"? Not for myself to judge :P But slender like that? I wish.
No seriously, I think she was pretty cool. Her whole character. And driving around Rome examining old churches for clues to a wild macabre treasure-hunt-like chase...and that too with a smart, macho, swimmer-physique, Harvard-brain guy (*sigh*) while an un-found Antimatter bomb is ticking away to total annihilation. That all would be totally my thing too. :D )

See? Started off talking about physics. Guess I gotta go back to my teeny-tiny atoms and nuclei doing that crazy decay-dance of theirs.

But who would ever believe that of all the people in the world (or now out of it :D), it was nobody else but Dan Brown who inspired me to study fizix with less hatred. :D At least for some time.

Interpretations

A few days ago, two little kids came to spend the day at my place-- children of one of my mum's friends.
Both of them were watching a kids' channel on the telly, when there came an advisory warning before a certain PG-rated show.

(am translating in English for the sake of the non-Hindi people, if any, who happen to read this.)

The older kid : "See, what's written on the TV screen ---...'Pogo advises that kids should watch the next program alongwith their parents.'..Do you know what that means?"

The younger kid : "Yeah I do. It means that the next program is so good that the kids' parents should also watch it."

He spoke sooo innocently, I couldn't help but laugh.
:)

Practical Application

Sheesh, studying science kinda kills your creativity. And tomorrow is my physics exam. And our tuitions teacher has come up with a grand new scheme-- he's made all of us tell him the marks we expect to get in this exam. And if anybody gets marks below the targeted, I dare not think of the consequences.

And yours truly, like the whimsical girl that she is, told him 62 out of 70. This is the sad part.

But I just couldn't help sharing this question I found in the Kinematics part of the textbook. Read it--

"A drunkard comes out of a pub and starts walking in a narrow lane just outside it. He takes 5 steps forward and 3 steps backward, then again 5 steps forward and three steps backward, and so on. Each step is 1 metre long and requires 1 second..."

And the last line just cracked me up--

"....Determine how long it takes him to fall in a ditch 13 metre away from the pub."

Practical applications of physics, eh?

"People"

Arti di wrote this post and it just reminded me of a similar poem I'd written a long time back.

"People"

It was a cold and misty night
Misty was the street and misty the streetlight
I cared not, but the wind had a bite
'Cause Dad was driving me to a party site.

We were passing through a lonely lane,
What I saw, people look at with disdain.
A young woman, crouched by the roadside,
With a little kid, trying to hide.

Her clothes were torn by usage for years
Her once-comely face blotched with tears.
Only some rags keeping out cold and her fears
The kid very pale for want of care,
She watching passers with a silent stare.

I watched for a moment, but it went to the heart,
As the headlight beamed, I saw her start
A gleam of hope came in her eyes,
Seeing the car pass, which changed to a sigh.

I recalled her face, its pallid hue
Why I couldn't forget her, I never knew
"What will she do, what will.."
I kept on thinking, till
"Time to step down," I heard Dad say
I walked to the party, all glitter and no gray.

There were lots of people there
Talking in groups or pair
Sounds of music and of laughter
Were seeming to ring the rafter.

I contrasted the image,
Same was their and that girl's age
Their clothes were 'torn' too, not with use,
But that was the latest rage!
Couldn't help noticing, the difference was so immense
Between the rich and the poor, so high a fence.

There is this disparity wall
A beggar with a tattered shawl
But people buying furs in a trendy mall...
Doesn't God hear the poor call?

Why this difference, what do you say?
I've wondered since that day.

Yeh India hai...yahan aisa hee hotaa hai...

So very recently, a German immigrant student was raped in one of the hotels in my city, by one of her Indian friends, with whom she was travelling.

The next day and till a few days after, the local newspapers printed the photographs of a large crowd of people watching from outside the court and police station premises, where the victim had been taken to file her statement of accusation. Another point you could easily observe was that the people comprising the crowd were all men.

I mean, why such sudden interest in this case, Gentlemen? You don't crowd around the police station when a person who has been robbed on the highway goes to file the report....you don't do so when anybody goes to complain about a burglary, or a family fued....Hell, you don't even do so when the nondescript village woman reports a case of a rape....Then why the excessive concern about this particular case? What do you want to see? Why?

One might tell them that if they are that much interested in watching the proceedings, why don't they go and stand outside the consumer courts? Those are courts as well.

Another thing was, while the victim was apparently deliberately made to cover her face, the rapist, who's the son of a high-profile police officer, was not. He looked so ultra-confident from those newspaper clips...like as if he were the one demanding justice...

I don't know if such a thing happens in other parts of the world too, but it is certainly very common in our country. Where does the answer, the reason lie? Is it the sick mentality of most of the society...or is it all deliberate? I think the former is closer to the truth.

And often we console ourselves saying "Yeh India hai...yahan aisa hee hotaa hai..."

'Kay, hotaa hai...but it's high time our society needs to get outta this mindset.

But how do we get others to do that?

Nostalgia

Nostalgia in the beginning of the year...baat kuchh jamti nahin... par kya karein...the Class Tenth session just ended officially today. The New Year has begun..but you know, for us students the school year holds much importance. I still remember the times when as small kids we used to take resolutions not on the New Year but at the beginning of the new school session in July.....a bit late , but it's the thought that counts, doesn't it?

So we were talking about this session. It feels like right now only it had begun, and ended so soon..I mean, how could it? Many of the friends would go to some other places, and in any case we all would not be in the same classroom--no more seeing those faces, no more giggling through classes. No more the class X A famous for its 'unity' (as they call it)--we who even stopped the bus taking us for the outing to get down from it and into the other bus where the remaining friends were!....'Tenth A' will not be there, though we all shall remain.

I'm really turning nostalgic. And did you ever listen to this song called "Hello" by Evanescence? The music makes you so full of poignancy, or perhaps it is just the way I feel...
The song goes:

"Playground school bell rings again,
Rain clouds come to play again..."

(Thanks, Abhimanyu, if you are reading this, for making me listen to this beautiful song...)

Perhaps when sometime later I listen to it, I will remember our own good ole days . Still living in our memories. I'm already beginning to miss it all.

The session at a glance:
Made friends with some cool new people.
Liked teachers, disliked teachers, studied, aced, bunked and what not...
Orgainsed some fantastic programmes together.
Won and lost, cared and shared,
Got closer to some friends,
Read lots of novels during classes, after all, what is the drawer in the desk for? :D
Solved some jhamele s, and even created some...:D

To sum it up in two words---"We enjoyed!". Like never before. I'll definitely hate not having some of these people in my class the next session. I just don't like sudden changes, if they do not offer a satisfying prospect..I mean, for once it is difficult to adjust when suddenly the people you are accustomed to be around, almost half of the day since the last few years, are not around there any more..isn't it?

Time flies. Now I guess I'm beginning to realize that it seems to have 'flied' when you measure it by the happy moments and seems to have 'crawled' if you measure it by the sadder ones.....
I want these friendships to last all life, which they probably won't, and I wish we all will never forget each other, always keeping alive our spirit of these gone days.

Goodbye, dear old days of class tenth, but trust me, you will live as long as we all are here.

Today being the last day, I wanted it to be especially good, which it wasn't. Somebody behaved in a way that I didn't like and it spoiled my mood :(
But in the last period we went out and decided to take a group photo of the whole class....hmmm....don't we all look like the cheerful, spirited young people that we are?

Class Tenth of 2005-06, St. Anselms Sr. Sec. School, Alwar.

(We 49 students , and near the centre is our classteacher Mrs.Roy)

Read poem dedicated to this school year.